Nerd Purity Test. I am 59% pure, meaning I am 41% nerd. I expected that.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban teaser trailer is now available! I grabbed the lowest-quality version this morning before work (it’s about 5MB) and even that looks good. I audibly gasped when I realized I was looking at a Dementor. The Snook was like, “Ooh, what are the scary black things?” Poor boy; he hasn’t read the books and he’s got no idea. I don’t want to spoil him for this one at all. Only seven months to go!

Trivia Update: We sucked big time. And Comic Book Guy’s team won again! We think they cheat. I did manage to win us a bonus jug of beer for knowing the actress that starred opposite Harrison Ford in Temple of Doom, and my number got drawn in the joker poker. (I won a calculator.) We came soooo close to winning the $900 jackpot. I knew the author that collaborated with Stephen King on The Talisman and the Snook knew the first town in Italy to host the Winter Olympics. (Thank you, Amazing Race!) We blew it on Buddy Holly’s only hit in Australia after his death. Anyway, your other questions for the day are:

• Which five letters of the alphabet most frequently appear in written English?
• Which three countries in Asia start with the letter “A”?
• Name the six British monarchs of the 20th century.
• Name the five James Bond movies with one-word titles.

Good luck!

Orgy on the Great Barrier Reef. That sounds spectacular. (It’s not what you think.)

In case you’ve ever wondered what the New Zealand rugby team are saying when they do their scary ass war chant, this site has everything you need to know about the haka. Other than the whole “I die! I die! I live! I live!” bit, it’s really not as intimidating as it sounds.

Are you going to be in London from December ’03 to March ’04? You lucky jerk. You get to go see Giles in Peter Pan and The Pirates of Penzance! (Thanks to Jenny for the link.)

On a related note, the Snook mentioned that Ian McKellen’s going to be doing an upcoming play here at the Opera House. Fun! I actually saw him as Captain Hook in Peter Pan in London in the spring of ’98. He was fantastic, as you might expect.

The Apple Music Store is TIME’s Coolest Invention of 2003!

The Australian government has officially dropped information technology from its list of “in demand” skills. Back when I immigrated, you’d get bonus points on your application if you had IT experience. Not anymore! I guess they’re finally realizing that the tech job market over here really does suck right now.

Attention Chicagoans. Apparently Marshall Field’s is using “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” for the theme of its Christmas windows this year. I’d love to get some pictures for my Dahl site. Any volunteers willing/able to take some and e-mail them to me?

Daring Fireball has a good overview of text rendering in Panther for us Mac people. As the extent of my typographic knowledge is recognizing Comic Sans misuse, I appreciated the explanation of why reading text on computer displays just plain sucks.